November 13 2015.

A petition with nearly 2400 signatures has been submitted to Lewes District Council (LDC) objecting to, and calling upon, LDC to halt the proposed building of a total of 32 flats on Piddinghoe Avenue and Steyning Avenue car parks. Another petition with over 1500 signatures covering all the above car parks and Roderick South (south side) car park in Peacehaven is to be submitted to LDC this week.

A Save Peacehaven Car Parks spokesman said: "No other town in the LDC area is facing LDC proposalls to build on 75% of all LDC owned car parks. We consider the car park study carried out in July and on LDC's website to have serious inconsistencies and should not be used to justify the closure of the car parks."

Ian Harness, whose house backs on to Roderick South (south side) and the car park where LDC's developer, Karis, proposes to build ten flats directly in front of his house said, "The front of my house faces on to the car park and will be in a permanent shadow if this block of flats is built. My wife and I cannot sleep at night worrying about these flats being built right in front of my house. I am just an ordinary person trying to provide for my family and this is devastating."

David Burnham whose dental practice is situated adjacent to Steyning Avenue car park said: "I was only given planning permission to set up my dental practice if my customers could park in Steyning Avenue car park."

A spokesman for Save Peacehaven car parks said: 'It is critical to businesses adjacent to these car parks, their customers and constituents of Peacehaven and Telscombe that these petitions are fully debated at the next full Lewes District Council meeting at 2.30 pm on the 9th of December at County Hall in Lewes.

"However, Lewes District Council has inferred that it will not debate all the above petitions until the New Year, which shall be well into the statutory planning submission period.

"We call upon businesses, customers and residents of Peacehaven, Telscombe and East Saltdean to e-mail or write to all their Lewes District Councillors, including the Leader of LDC and the Chief Executive of LDC, requesting that the above petitions are fully debated at the next full Lewes District Council Meeting on the 9th of December and the proposed building on all the above."